Satisfying 12 years of anticipation

After spending the last 12 years as the crown jewel of video game vaporware, Blizzard has finally unleashed “StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty,” the sequel to its groundbreaking classic “StarCraft.”

Is it as revolutionary as its predecessor? No.

Does that matter? Not really.

“Wings of Liberty” is probably still the best game of the year.

“Wings” has a better story line than the original, and this time we experience the story’s progression through actual character development instead of video conferencing sessions involving cartoon-y talking heads.

Watching Sarah Kerrigan get over run with Zerg during a flashback was like a trailer for the “StarCraft” movie that’ll never happen — it was damn near cinematic.

Since Blizzard decided to split “StarCraft II” into three games (the forthcoming “Heart of the Swarm” and “Legacy of the Void” ), “Wings of Liberty” focuses the single player entirely on the human perspective.

If you like playing as the Terran, this is wonderful — but if you’ve spent the past decade honing your skills with one of the other two races, it’s annoying.

While the game does an incredible job with the Terran campaign, the charm of the original was its offering three totally different playing styles. This time, players get one-third the play styles for about $20 more than the original cost at launch.
A neat plot device does give you some time commanding the Protoss, but it’s a short experience.

Along with the new single-player campaign, Blizzard has totally revamped the Battle.net multiplayer service by integrating it into just about everything that happens in the game. Players get matched by skill — and then get PWN’d by a kid who has been playing since launch. (“StarCraft” remains one of the hardest games to play casually.)

Despite my complaints, I haven’t had this much fun with a strategy game in years.
Just not quite as long as Blizzard took to make it.